Dante's Poets
Throughout the Commedia, and especially in Purgatorio, Dante is concerned with clarifying the nature of his poetic vocation and with specifying his poetic affiliations. This project comes to a head in this week's reading, on the purgatorial Terraces of Gluttony and Lust. Certainly in one sense, Dante inserts himself into a tradition, which he construes this as a sort of genealogical lineage, and he identifies a series of poetic "forefathers," who thus constitute a sort of canon of the "right" kind of poetry. This tradition has roots, on the one hand, in the poetry of classical Rome and, on the other hand, in the more "modern" verse of the twelfth- and thirteenth-century Provençal troubadours and the earlier lyric poets of Italy. Below I just want to offer a few notes about some of the poets Dante has encountered throughout the Commedia, in hopes that this might help us navigate this material a bit more deftly.
- Inferno IV: In Limbo Dante encounters a group of classical (Greek and Roman) poets: Homer, Ovid, Horace, Lucan, and, of course, Virgil. Inserting himself into the tradition of epic themes and stately rhetoric that they represent, he counts himself the sixth of their number. (Virgil later mentions that the Roman poet Juvenal was also among the souls in Limbo.)
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- Inferno X: Here Dante encounters the father of his so-called "first friend," the Florentine poet Guido Cavalcanti. Historically, Dante in his political career had been indirectly responsible for Cavalcanti's exile from Florence; Cavalcanti died in exile in August 1300, a few months after the fictional date of the poem. During his very awkward conversation with Guido's father, Dante-pilgrim suggests that he was able to travel through Hell because of the assistance of one "whom your Guido held in disdain." Critics debate whether he was referring to Virgil or Beatrice (I think it's both), but in any case Dante-poet is alerting us to what he sees as intellectual or aesthetic or maybe even spiritual defects in his dead "friend." (By the way, if Dante had never lived, Cavalcanti would certainly stand as the great Italian poet before Petrarch, but Dante's reputation, and perhaps even specifically Inferno X, relegated Cavalcanti to the margins of literary history.)
- Inferno XIII: Pier delle Vigne dominates the reader's attention in the Wood of the Suicides due to his engaging if somewhat enigmatic story of political service and palace intrigue. Dante never mentions that Pier delle Vigne was also an accomplished poet, one of the most famous writers of the so-called "Sicilian School" that emerged at the court of Frederick II in Palermo in the early thirteenth century. Is this a significant omission?
- Inferno XV: Discussions of Brunetto Latini usually focus on his role as Dante's mentor, making reference to the part he played as an influential teacher of rhetoric in Florence in the late thirteenth century. "Ser Brunetto" was the author of two fairly well-known poems, the Tesoretto (in Italian) and the Livre du Trésor (in French). Both of these are rather unoriginal encyclopedic works, intended to be read as summations of knowledge by literate gentlemen. Brunetto Latini was well-respected in Florence, as we known from other sources. Although Dante-pilgrim expresses thanks to Latini for teaching him "how man makes himself eternal," we can only speculate why Dante-poet has relegated his poetic "father" to the Circle of the Sodomites.
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- Purgatorio VI-IX: Here Dante and Virgil come upon the thirteenth-century poet Sordello, who was born in Virgil's hometown of Mantua but who worked in the courts of southern France and wrote poetry in Provençal. In his treatise De Vulgare Eloquentia, Dante admires Sordello's lyric poetry; here, however, he seems more concerned with Sordello's role as an advisor to princes, and he uses Sordello as a mouthpiece to denounce political corruption in Italy.
- Purgatorio XI: In Dante's meeting with the manuscript illuminator Oderisi da Gubbio on the Terrace of the Prideful, Oderisi, reflecting on the fleeting nature of fame and fortune, mentions the poets Guido Guinizzelli (whom we'll meet later) and Guido Cavalcanti. Just as the second Guido (Cavalcanti) replaced Guinizzelli in poetic prominence, so one might come along to dislodge Cavalcanti from poetic fame. It's not hard to see that Dante — certainly aware that he is making such a claim on the Terrace of the Prideful — is referring to himself.
- Purgatorio XX-XXII and florim: There is no critical agreement as to why Dante-poet chooses to fabricate a story of secret conversion for the late Roman poet Statius. Unlike his textual relationship with other Roman poets (like Virgil, Ovid, and even Lucan), Dante rarely adapts or paraphrases lines from Statius into his own work, nor does he rely on Statius much as a source for allusions to classical mythology and history. What is abundantly clear, however, is that Dante is using Statius in some kind of intermediate position between himself and Virgil; Statius' admiration of Virgil augments Virgil's status, while his "conversion" to Christianity through inspiration from Virgil's poetry gives us a model for how the good things about the classical pagan world can be subsumed into a Christian worldview. And yet all this high appraisal of Virgil's poetry nonetheless casts into relief the fact that the poet himself seems to be a permanent resident of Hell. Readers also might well wonder what is at stake in having Virgil in Canto XXV cede the floor to Statius, who then gives a long and detailed account of the embryonic development of the human body and soul.
- Purgatorio XXIII-XXIV: Among the Gluttonous on the sixth terrace, Dante and Virgil encounter Forese Donati. Forese had been a friend of Dante Alighieri's since childhood, and Dante was in fact married to Forese's cousin Gemma Donati. (Dante knew the family well: he places Forese's brother Corso Donati in Hell, and we will later meet Forese's sister Piccarda Donati in Paradise.) Biographically, Dante and Forese Donati are known to have exchanged a series of very sexually suggestive sonnets. Here, encountering Forese among the Gluttonous, one might speculate whether Dante is criticizing Forese (and perhaps his earlier self) for riotous living.
- Purgatorio XXVI: It is no coincidence that it is in the Terrace of the Lustful that Dante encounters his most immediate poetic father (and the supposed founder of the "sweet new style"), Guido Guinizzelli. Clearly Dante is aware of the dangers of love poetry, as Francesca's citation of Guinizzelli in in Inferno V and as his own dream in Purgatorio XIX suggest, even the poetry of the dolce stil novo. So here Dante's father-figure love poet is suffering in the flames that purge the lustful. (It is perhaps also significant that the corresponding canto to Guinizzelli's in Inferno stages the encounter with Ulysses, also a potent figure for poetic ambition.) During their conversation (and notice that it's Guinizzelli who wants to know who Dante is, not the other way around), Guinizzelli disparages some lesser poets: the Italian poet Guittone d'Arezzo (already put down by Bonagiunta in Canto XXIV--povero Guittone!) and the very famous Provençal love-poet Giraut de Bornelh, who doesn't even get mentioned by name but only as "that fellow from Limoges." In contrast, Guinizzelli indicates with great approval one last figure, the twelfth-century Provençal poet Arnaut Daniel. Arnaut Daniel was famed for practicing the so-called trobar clus, a phrase which might translate as "difficult poetics" or "closed verse." Arnaut Daniel's poetry is dazzlingly virtuosic, and he was (and is) probably the master of that most difficult of poetic forms, the sestina. Dante honors him — and the beauties of the Provençal language — by having Arnaut Daniel speak in his native tongue:
El cominciò liberamente a dire: |
Imitation may be the greatest form of flattery, but one also wonders if Dante-poet is not attempting to surpass
even Arnaut Daniel by flawlessly tailoring the Provençal language to merge perfectly into his own Italian terza rima
form (see p. 582).
even Arnaut Daniel by flawlessly tailoring the Provençal language to merge perfectly into his own Italian terza rima
form (see p. 582).
In retrospect, it is worth thinking through Dante's evaluation of all of these previous poets (whether writing in Latin, Provençal, or the various Italian dialects) by turning to his own brief ars poetica, which he offers to Bonagiunta da Lucca in Purgatorio XXIV:
"... i' mi son un che, quando |
Dante-pilgrim claims here that his art is artless, that he is a mere conduit (or scribe or even secretary) for whatever Love itself has to say. This statement accords well with the pilgrim's growing awareness of the nature of human and divine love. However, as his deep engagement with a host of literary predecessors throughout the Commedia shows, Dante-poet's status as the scribe of Love cannot be innocent of those who walked that road before him.
Further Reading
- Teodolinda Barolini, Dante's Poets: Textuality and Truth in the Comedy (Princeton University Press, 1984)
- Teodolinda Barolini, "Purgatorio 24" on Commento Baroliniano (online), access here: https://digitaldante.columbia.edu/dante/divine-comedy/purgatorio/purgatorio-24/
- Paul Blackburn, trans., Proensa: An Anthology of Troubadour Poetry (New York Review Books Classics, 2017)
- Guido Cavalcanti, The Complete Poems, trans. Marc Cirigliano (Italica Press, 1992)
- Ernst Robert Curtius, European Literature and the Latin Middle Ages, trans. Willard R. Trask, reprint edition (Princeton University Press, 1991)
- Olivia Holmes, Assembling the Lyric Self: Authorship from Troubadour Song to Italian Poetry Book (University of Minnesota Press, 1999)
- Olivia Holmes, Dante's Two Beloveds: Ethics and Erotics in the Divine Comedy (Yale University Press, 2008)
- Tristan Kay, Dante's Lyric Redemption: Eros, Salvation, Vernacular Tradition (Oxford University Press, 2015)
- Winthrop Wetherbee, The Ancient Flame: Dante and the Poets (Notre Dame University Press, 2008)